Retail Tech Weekly — June 8th

This week — Mary Meeker’s report, Amazon Basics and Alibaba’s tech

Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report recap

With respect to retail there were two important things Mary Meeker’s report highlighted. The first was the blurring lines between ads, content, products and transactions. Very often (too often some might say) content has become ads, and transactions are embedded in the ads. Of course, this also means a huge push to improve attribution in embedded channels. Companies seem to be doubling down on that with Google announcing a new beta for Google Attribution and Facebook making a big push for Facebook Live.

Jeff Bezos has talked about how much of what is done with machine learning happens below the surface. Now an in-depth piece from Alibaba dives deeper and explains how each of their verticals is impacted and powered by AI technologies.

A grand of a different kind

Over 1000 store closures were announced this week. Pitch this alongside Amazon’s stock breaking the $1000 barrier and we have the sort of symbolic event that sends newscasters into an excited frenzy.